Talk At The Hantan ForumOn Four Clean-ups Work

March 28, 1964

[SOURCE: Long Live Mao Tse-tung Thought, a Red Guard Publication.]

1. Forty or fifty years ago I read a book, Record of Hsiang Shan (Hsiang Shan Chi). The two opening lines were “I do not sing of heavens nor of earth, I only sing of the book Record of Hsiang Shan.” When you sing of this, you can sing of no other.

2. We have not had a class struggle for 10 years. We had one in ’52 and one in ’57[1] but those were just in the administration organs and in the schools. This time we must do the socialist education campaign in the countryside well, for at least three or four years. I say at least three or four years; otherwise, five or six years. Some places plan to complete 60 percent this year. We must not hurry. Haste makes waste. Of course this is not to say that we can nibble away at it slowly. The problem is that the campaign has already begun. Honan is in too much of a hurry. It would be reasonable to say this is a second land reform.

3. (Some people report that the work teams use contracts to claim the blue skies as theirs)

Does not contracting for the public assist the local despots and evil gentry?

(Some people report that some work teams strike at people)

Contracting for the public is to strike at people.

4. It is not strange that the test points [experiments] failed. We must still have them even though they failed. We must pay special attention to summing up the lessons of failure.

5. (Some people say that some people advocate replacing the “Four Cleans-ups” with a study of Ta-ch’ing and the Liberation Army).

This represents the faction which does not carry out class struggle. Is it possible that Ta-ch’ing does not oppose corruption and waste? That it does not oppose thievery?

6. The Five Antis directives of the Central Committee did not speak of class struggle.

7. We should let the monsters and freaks come out. Halfway will not do; if they are halfway out they can still slip back in.

8. With regard to the downward transfer of the four rights of authority, it proves that the opinion of the deputy director of the Rural Work Department of the Shantung Provincial Committee is correct. Chou Hsing did not agree with him and said that we could not transfer downward to the team. In actuality it was a minority opinion representing the opinion of the majority.

9. (Some say that university professors who have gone to the countryside for the four dean-ups say they do not understand anything themselves)

Intellectuals are really the most ignorant. Now they have acknowledged defeat. The professors are not like the students and the students are not like the peasants.

10. They have turned over all the machineguns and do not want to arrest him again. Arrest is to hand contradictions to those above. The higher levels in turn do not understand the situation, but would do well to transfer the supervision to the masses.

11. Everyone must read documents, except for those who are old and ill, whose cultural level is so low they cannot read documents, and those whose political prestige is very low, such as P’eng Te-huai.

12. “On the Present Situation and Our Tasks” was spoken by me in 1947[2]. Someone transcribed it and it was revised by me. At that time I had contracted a disease whereby I could not write. Now when I want something written, it is all done by a secretary, not by my hand. Of course, some things may be written for me by other people. For instance, the speeches delivered by the premier when he leaves the country are done by Juang Chen and Ch’iao Kuan-hua. When you are ill, you may have someone write down what you say. But if you never take the initiative and rely on a secretary, it is just like having a secretary assume your responsibility for leadership work.

13. My 1933 investigation at Ku-t’ien reflected the opinions of the peasants, and was the opinions of the peasants issuing from my lips.

Opinions do not come from Peking. If a factory has no materials to work with, it does not produce anything. We rely on your raw materials to do our processing.

Notes

[1.]
Struggle in ’52 refers to the campaign against “3 evils” and “5 evils” (see note 2 on page 6 of this volume.)

Struggle in ’57 refers to the anti-rightist struggle of 1957.

[2.]
For this article see Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Volume V, pp 157-176.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.HTML
revised 2004 by Marxists.org